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An brook so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a community for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of local people started commemorating their past. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Addressing the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity never stood in the manner of the locals socializing in the identical inn, visiting the very same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the same learning center.

After the War Division

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they came, the Russians erected wooden posts by the brook. For a year they occupied the whole community, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat back over the stream. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to present ID, even though all understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the east side signaling and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his professional career creating it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how much barrier they wished to preserve. They selected a section on the western fringe, close to where a local resident managed to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was substantially fortified.

Conserved Buildings

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a series of displays depicting the most impactful moments in the village’s history. As we move, the director lists the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to tend to their fields; the spouse could use the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, lest they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Context

The border between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the greatest, but in excess of two times more persons (more than 300) died seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They nor did they endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, the director states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. Roughly 15k visited annually, optical devices in possession, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and large vehicle area – is likely to